And the 2012 Oscar Nominees Are...

George Clooney, Meryl Streep and The Artist lead the nominations at the 84th Academy Awards

Tuesday , 24 January 2012

Jennifer Lawrence and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak

George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams are among the stars nominated in the top acting categories at the 2012 Oscar awards - making for much the same list which has been in the focus this awards season.

The Help and The Artist both landed nods for Best Picture, competing against War Horse, Moneyball, The Descendants, Hugo, The Tree of Life, Midnight in Paris and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In terms of most number of nominations though, Hugo beat out The Artist, scoring 11 to the latter's 10.

The Help also scooped acting honors for Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis and Jessica Chastain, while silent film The Artist picked up nominations for Berenice Bejo and Jean Dujardin and a nod in the Best Director category for Michel Hazanavicius.

Usually, a list of 10 nominees vie for the Best Picture prize but this year only nine made the cut. It's part of a recent rule change, which went went into effect for the first time in 2012. In June 2011, Academy executives decided to "add a new twist" to the 2011 Best Picture race by no longer guaranteeing spots for 10 films in the category and instead reserving spaces for as few as five.

The organisation then adopted a preferential voting system, which eliminates movies that did not receive at least five per cent of the first-place votes on the nominations ballot - leaving only the most well-liked films in contention.

The award nominations were announced at a press conference in LA today (24 January) by Winter's Bone star Jennifer Lawrence and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak

The 84th annual Academy Awards ceremony will take place on 26 February 2012 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, and will be hosted by Billy Crystal. For now, check out all the nominees right here: